William H. Tranter

William H. Tranter received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Alabama in 1970. He joined Virginia Tech in July 1997 and serves as the Bradley Professor of Communications and as Director of the Mobile and Portable Radio Research Group. Prior to coming to Virginia Tech, he served for twenty-six years at the University of Missouri–Rolla (UMR), most recently as the Schlumberger Professor of Electrical Engineering. In 1996, he was a visiting Erskine Fellow at Canterbury University in Christchurch, New Zealand. Dr. Tranter is the co-author of two classic textbooks in communications and signal processing, Principles of Communications: Systems, Modulation, and Noise, 5^th edition (Wiley, 2001), and Signals and Systems: Continuous and Discrete, 4^th edition (Prentice Hall 1998). He has received numerous awards for outstanding research and service contributions, including the IEEE Centennial Medal, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, the IEEE Communications Society Donald W. McLellan Meritorious Service Award, and the IEEE Communications Society Exemplary Publications Award. He also received a number of teaching awards from the University of Missouri–Rolla and from Tau Beta Pi and IEEE. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications and as Director of Journals for the IEEE Communications Society. He currently serves a Vice President–Technical Activities of the IEEE Communications Society. He was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 1985.

K. Sam Shanmugan

K. Sam Shanmugan received the Ph.D. degree from Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, in Electrical Engineering. He is currently the SBC Professor of Telecommunication in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Kansas. Dr. Shanmugan’s current research interests are in the areas of wireless communications and computer-aided modeling and analysis of communication systems. Dr. Shanmugan is the author of over 100 publications in the above areas and is the author/co-author of three books, Digital and Analog Communication Systems (Wiley, 1979), Random Signals: Detection Estimation and Data Analysis (Wiley, 1988), and Simulation of Communication Systems, 2^nd edition (Kluewer Academic Press, 2000). From 1985 to 1995 Dr. Shanmugan served in a number of leadership positions in the industry: President of STA*R corporation (1985–88), Senior Vice President of Comdisco Systems (1988–93), General Manager of the Alta Group of Cadence Design Systems (1994–95), and Chief Technical Officer of Systems and Networks (1995–96). During this time he led the development and commercialization of modeling and simulation software for the design of communication systems (BOSS-Block Oriented Systems Simulator) and networks (BONeS-Block Oriented Network Simulator). Dr. Shanmugan was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 1985 for his contributions to the area of computer-aided design of communication systems. He is also the recipient of many teaching and research awards at the University of Kansas.

Theodore S. Rappaport

Theodore S. Rappaport received the Ph.D. degree from Purdue University in 1987, and was a faculty member at Virginia Tech from 1988–2002. There, he founded the Mobile and Portable Radio Research Group and served as the James S. Tucker Professor of Engineering. In 2002, he joined the ECE faculty at the University of Texas in Austin where he founded the Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG). Dr. Rappaport has 30 patents issued or pending and has authored, co-authored, and co-edited numerous books in the wireless field, including the popular textbooks Wireless Communications: Principles & Practice (Prentice-Hall, 1996, 2002), and Smart Antennas for Wireless Communications: IS-95 and Third Generation CDMA Applications (Prentice Hall, 1999). He was a recipient of the 1999 Stephen O. Rice Prize Paper Award from the IEEE Communications Society, and the 2002 ASEE Frederick E. Terman outstanding educator award. Rappaport has founded two successful high-tech companies, and is presently Chairman and CEO of Wireless Valley Communications, Inc., a leading software simulation and measurement product company that provides solutions for in-building wireless network deployment and management.

Kurt L. Kosbar

Kurt L. Kosbar is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Missouri–Rolla. He received B.S. degrees in electrical engineering and computer engineering from Oakland University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California. While performing his graduate work at USC, Dr. Kosbar was employed by Hughes Aircraft Company, Space and Communications Group, as a staff engineer. Dr. Kosbar was a Fulbright fellow at the Technical University of Gdansk, is a member of the IEEE, and has been inducted into the Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, and Phi Kappa Phi honor societies.